


It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Deception, Lies, and Family Turmoil (Christmas)

by jeanralphio



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Male Character, Craigslist, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeanralphio/pseuds/jeanralphio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the bustling holiday season of 2013, Nick, an interior designer who lives in Seattle, goes to visit his cousin and her husband for the month of December thanks to work. In a spur of covers and indignation, he ends up lying to them about a boyfriend he has back home and must find someone to stand in for this alleged boyfriend as quickly as he can, so he turns to the ever-resourceful Craigslist for help...</p><p>Rated mature for later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Family

New York is very straightforward, really - it's where you live when you know where you need to be. It's also where you live if you have the money to afford a nice cozy life outside the city and spend your days and nights romping about its streets, pretending mid-life is much further from you than it actually is. Since I've never found myself to be party to either category, I've always avoided it for as long as I can, saving it for the day that I marry rich and make my family proud for once. I wish that was mostly a joke.

My cousin Daisy, however, chose to take up residence in the charming outskirts of the city and on Long Island, where the houses were massive and compensating for far too much. She did marry rich, as was expected of her by our unfortunately traditional family and grandparents, and her husband Tom was both a bureaucrat and the type of person to have golf buddies. He and I attended Yale together for a long few years, the majority of which I had to endure him spreading rumors of some distant relation to President Buchanan to try and inch his way up the 1% sphere. Still, I liked Daisy, and spending time around the absurd company they both kept was always fun for a night or two.

This particular winter, though, said night or two would go on for longer than expected. At the time, I worked for a design company, the clients of which would often request personal visits from the designers in order to assess the space and be able to properly embellish it. My boss, Dan, knew very well how little I liked to leave the comfort of my lazy little apartment in midtown Seattle, and had given me the benefit of the doubt for the past couple years in letting me submit my work comfortably from the couch. Mentioning that I had family out East was what ended up biting me in the ass. Because, after all, who wouldn't want to spend December with their cousin and her vaguely racist husband in a stiflingly large city?

But despite the poison the city and I held between us, I was kind of excited to go. Spending Christmas with Daisy would save me the hassle of dodging my parents' almost obligatory annual invitation, and I doubted sorely that New York would lack the most essential of my seasonal creature comforts, including but not limited to eggnog and rum. And so, with a small condo rented for me by my company, my dog entrusted to a friend, and a few belongings in hand, I made my way to New York for the winter of 2013.

-

The first day had me tentatively optimistic, the second wildly antisocial, and the third nearly certain I was starting to get the hang of it. Though I had visited Tom and Daisy before, I had never been left to my own devices in New York for an extended period of time. The streets were different than that of Seattle, and were I a poet, I would spout some bull about the people and the pavement being alive.

Daisy had invited me over for lunch on my third day in town, promising the afternoon to be lively, especially if it kept to the three of us. I boarded the LIRR bracing myself for a lesser version of a family reunion. Daisy herself greeted me at the door, gorgeous and petite in a white knit turtleneck and black leggings, her blond curls tight on her head. Tom, in comparison, looked as though he had already spent a morning at the country club, his pinstripe shirt unbuttoned enough to display a crop of black curls and his cheeks pink enough to indicate the spirits of the day had already been broken into. He pulled me into an impossible bear hug when I went to shake his hand and welcomed me to "their very own slice of paradise," confirming by belief that we truly were in a scripted romcom from the sixties.

"I'm so glad you're here, Nick," Daisy cooed, forcing a glass into my hand and floating into a chaise (the grandness of which could only really deem it as such). "Mom was delighted to know you wouldn't be spending Christmas alone again."

I smiled feebly. My aunt was easily the most likely to pick me apart every time I actually attended a family gathering. "She would've preferred to have me back in Chicago, I'm sure."

"Well, wouldn't everyone?" Daisy shrugged. "But Tom and I decided not to go back this year because we have you and Pammy as an excuse."

"And let's be real," Tom interjected, "The last thing any of us want to do is go back to Chicago, when we can celebrate properly - " he held up his wine glass " - "right here. Doesn't begin to compare to Seattle, does it, Nick?"

"Sure doesn't," I agreed. Already I had walked into my fair share of fellow tourists in the Subway and in the stiflingly congested streets of Time Square.

"Oh, my God, Nick, Nick," Daisy rushed, grabbing my hands. "You're not seeing anyone right now, are you? Because I have the perfect girl for you, she's only in town for the month, too, and I would love to fling you two together, at least give you something fun to do when Tom and I are occupied."

I froze, grimacing internally, if grimacing internally was a thing I could do. I had no interest in finding a girlfriend or any sort of long-term partner in the near future, but possibly the one thing I had less interest in than that was being set up by family members. So I thought on my feet, which is something I now realize I should never, ever try.

"I do have someone, actually."

Both Tom and Daisy looked much too surprised.

"How did I not hear about her?!" Daisy almost shouted. "I want details, Nick! Hair, personality, body, _everything_." I couldn't help but notice that she fell utterly short of a few essentials, like maybe _name, occupation,_ and _how the fuck did you ever._

But if I was being realistic with this fantasy, I would go all the way. "Neat, polite, tall. And, I should note, a man."

"Oh," she admitted, while Tom fixated me with a hard stare. My now yearly admission of my bisexuality apparently came only to fruition the day I decided to date male, even fictitiously.

"Is… he, um…" I could feel her testing the new word out in her mouth. "from Seattle?"

"Yeah," I answered, giving Tom eye contact and causing him to break it and stare instead into his lap. "We've been together for almost half a year now. Kind of short, but we feel like we've got something good."

The admission seemed to have taken Daisy a moment to process, but now that I was normalizing it, her smile was spreading, the happiness of her baby cousin thankfully more important than his sexuality. "Well, that's incredible! I am so, so proud of you, Nick. Really. Is he coming for Christmas?"

"Um." She stumped me there. The illusion of the boyfriend fell only as far as his need to be a corporeal. "No, I don't think so."

"Not even to spend the holidays with you? What kind of a long-term relationship doesn't spend their first Christmas together, Nick?"

"And moreover," Tom interjected, finally recovering from his apparently crippling homophobia, "are you sure that's something you can jump into that quickly and call 'long-term?' From what I know, these gay relationships don't last long. It's more like a tryst, isn't it."

I should have known better than to think the homophobia settled.

"Nonsense, Tom," Daisy shushed him, and for once, I was grateful at her rebuttal. "Would you really call half a year a tryst? Nicky, I insist we meet him. He sounds lovely - I barely know anything about him, and he sounds lovely. Promise me you'll invite him for Christmas?"

Blanking, I looked between her glowing expression and Tom's, which bore nothing short of deadpan fear. I was not exactly in a position to say he would deny an offer to come for the holidays, since there was rarely an occupation that would not let someone take off work for Christmas. And I had too much determination to make Tom as uncomfortable as possible and not let him succeed in his bi-fearing assumptions.

"Okay," I relented. "I'll try."

"Wonderful!" Daisy clapped and leapt to her feet, her curls bouncing wildly. "Christmas is going to be even better than I would have dreamed! I'll get us some champagne. This is cause for celebration…"

She pranced out of the room, arms aloft. Tom fixated his wine glass before taking a breath and gathering his thoughts. "Well, maybe this thing of yours will prove to me that the gay stuff isn't all it's chocked up to be, eh?"

"I don't need to _prove_ anything to you, Tom."

We sat in silence for a few more minutes before he mumbled something about "helping Daisy with the bottle" and walked very quickly out of the room. It was embarrassing enough that Tom and I went to Yale together and he literally never absorbed any of my male affairs throughout that period of my life, despite being in the same fraternity and having gossip dance around him all the time. Denial was a powerful thing.

I slumped back against my seat, both angry and weirdly proud at myself for making such a brash admission to Tom and Daisy without even thinking of the consequences. On one hand, anything was worth seeing the horror sink into Tom's face. On the other, the last thing I wanted to do to Daisy now was disappoint her. And on a third, strange hand I was not sure I wanted, part of me really though having someone for the holidays would be quite nice. Even if it was a false someone.

So, the Buchanans had a bit of a holiday tradition to adjust to. Their party guests, though undoubtedly mindlessly charming, would need to be throughly fooled by whatever ruse I was about to conduct.

And I, unfortunately, had a boyfriend to find.


	2. Ad

The situation felt much too calculated to be pure happenstance, but I couldn't pretend that part of me wasn't pleased with the turn of events. Though finding a fake boyfriend would definitely make the next month a little harder on me, it would certainly be better than sitting alone in my rented apartment, trying to find a spot of the room close enough to connect to a Wi-Fi network with no password to access the web (the landlord had forgotten to tell Dan that the network in the complex was down the last time he checked). Pulling an elaborate trick like this just seems like the type of thing one does in a city like New York, I thought. What better time than Christmas to make it happen?

And so, against my better judgment, I did the one thing a grown person hopes to never find themselves doing at any stage in their life.

I made a personal ad on Craigslist.

I sat in a corner of the room closest to an open window to access the most readily available connection. I scrolled through a few of the pre-existing ads to see if I could save myself the hassle of having to tailor my own request for help, but as expected, none of them quite suited my needs. I would need someone with acting experience, someone willing to be into men, and, as I had promised Daisy, someone "neat, polite, and tall."

I gave my ad a once-over.

 _Seeking man to play the role of a significant other to another man for what are sure to be some family antics this holiday season. Charade requested for last three weeks in December - acting experience preferred. Contact Nick at nkcdesign@gmail.com._  

I wondered briefly if it was too vague and/or too mocking to sound legitimate. From what I had heard, people on Craigslist had the tendency to answer even the strangest of ads, and in comparison to some of the others I had glimpsed while looking for the correct thread, mine did not seem entirely out of place (chances were someone would answer "looking for a fake boyfriend" sooner than they would "looking to find a foreskin donor for performance art project").

I pressed "submit" before I could give myself any more time to regret my decision. Knowing that I would be inclined to look at it a million times over if I remained sitting at the computer, I got up and called a friend back in Seattle to inform her of the situation.

She picked up on the fourth ring. "I considered letting it go to voicemail to prove exactly how rude you've been in not calling me for four days."

"Hi, Jordan." 

"Is 'call me when you're free' really too much of a request for you to abide by? It's Saturday, Nick. Don't tell me people in New York work on Saturday." 

"People in New York work pretty much the same hours as people in Seattle, I think," I said, laying on the couch. "But I'm entertaining both work _and_ family here. Which brings me to the problem I've walked into that led me to calling you."

I heard her scoff on the other end of the line. Jordan was one of my closest friends back home, who I had met, oddly enough, at Daisy and Tom's wedding. Jordan and Daisy went to college together, it turned out, but Jordan moved out west a few years after I did because of work and because we dated on and off for a few months following the wedding. Daisy had been all too delighted that her two favorite "family members" were seeing one another, and even more delighted to hear that I wouldn't be alone in my move out west. But as it turned out, things between Jordan and I worked much better as friends, and our being in Seattle was much more coincidental than intentional as the years went by. 

It did not, however, stop us from being close, if not overly invasive with each others' lives. "What'd you do?"

"I may have told Daisy and Tom that I had a boyfriend in Seattle and am inviting him out east for Christmas." 

"You DIDN'T!"

"Uh, I did."

 _"Wow."_ Jordan did not try to hide her laughter, but even she sounded skeptical that any of this was actually happening. "Wait, _why?_ And why a _boyfriend?_ You must have known that was a bad idea with Tom." 

"Tom was most of the reason he ended up being a man," I sighed.

 _"He_ being your fictional boyfriend who you now have to materialize for Christmas this year because, and I'm just taking a stab, here: you didn't want to seem pathetically conformist in front of your old Yale buddy?"

"Close, but Daisy was also trying to set me up with someone for the month, and I didn't want to get involved with that kind of thing."

"Your loss," Jordan chided. "The holidays sound like the perfect time to acquire and lose a fuck buddy as quickly as you both can. That could have been awesome."

"I seriously doubt it." 

"What are you gonna do about the needing a live body to present them come a few weeks from now? Hire a homeless guy? Call in a _favor?"_

"Kind of. I put an ad on Craigslist." I heard her gasp, and heard someone echoing behind her say, "Jordan, _the road."_

"Are you driving?" 

"Maybe. It's fine, I'm super at multitasking. I hope you know I'm going on Craigslist the moment I get home to go find your ad and answer it under at least five different personas - you will never guess which ones are me, and I will be _sure_ to tailor them specifically to your interests."

I rolled my eyes. She was not super at multitasking. "What, pray tell, are my _interests?"_

"Tall guys with muscles and short hair. Like the type that look like personal trainers. You also tend to like assholes - I hope you didn't tell Daisy your boyfriend was an asshole."

"I don't like _assholes."_

"Okay, seriously, Nick, I don't want to have to go through the list of all the men you've fucked in front of Chad."

I assumed Chad was her driving buddy. Part of me appreciated that Jordan was so attuned to my interests (she could very well tell me what it was I preferred in women, too), but part of me hoped that I wouldn't fall for her trap and answer a reply to the ad that was just her in disguise. 

"Please don't actually answer my ad." 

"No promises. I'm gonna hang up now, we just got back to my place." 

"Be safe. Don't let Chad back in a car with you at the wheel." 

"Honey, I'm _always_ at the wheel."

I would roll my eyes entirely around in their sockets if it could properly express my exasperation for Jordan sometimes. But the physical impossibility of that aside, most of the time, I wouldn't actually. Because most of the time, she wasn't wrong.

The line went dead, and I briefly hoped she would live to call me tomorrow before turning my attention elsewhere. I refreshed my e-mail in the vague hope that Dan or someone from work had contacted me to help take my mind off the landmine that was the ad. To my dismay, the first few things that popped up were promotions, an e-mail from my bank, and a single message with the subject line "Holiday Charade."

Heart sinking, I clicked on it.

 

 _Dear Nick,_  

_Desperate as this may sound, I happened upon your ad on Craigslist and was curious to hear the exact details of this farce you plan to fabricate this holiday season. I have little acting experience other than the occasional Christmas pageant in grade school, but would be open to coaching. If you are at all interested in my humble yet earnest favor, I suggest we arrange a meeting to speak further in person._

_Looking forward to it._  

_J. Gatsby_

 

This was by far the strangest e-mail I had received in a few months. No one - not even the Upper West Siders I met with for work - wrote with quite as much pretension or carefully selected vocabulary. 

It produced in me a series of emotions. First was surprise - it was both startling and shifty that someone had answered the ad so promptly, and taken it with such seriousness. This "Gatsby" was asking for details rather than ridiculing me, asking for my address, or sending me dick pics right off the bat (which I didn't really expect, but was slightly fearing, considering Craigslist). Second was apprehension - though I had posted the request assumedly intending to get replies and meet with some mysterious man, the actual practice of it sounded much more dangerous. I had next to no idea who this "J. Gatsby" was, and a Google search, as I would discover later, turned up next to no results. 

Third, unfortunately, was a weird sort of draw to this overly polite stranger, who described his part in my request as "humble yet earnest." And his lack of acting experience, enigmatic name, and rapid response produced the most frightening emotion of all.

It excited me. 

So against my better judgment, I wrote a response.

 

_Gatsby,_

_How is 2PM tomorrow at the Starbucks on 27th and 7th? Looking forward to talking more._  

_Best,_

_Nick_ _  
_

For better or for worse, to me, there was no backing out now.


End file.
